First to create a test table (of course called EMP) in schema "A". Next to place a DBMS_REDACT policy on it which replaces the credit_card information with X for each digit.
Just to verify that it works:

23 September 2014

Both jQuery and Font Awesome are standard included with APEX5 (still in early adopter). With a little bit of jQuery you can create an animated button that reflects that it is doing something in the background.
For this example I created a button "Text + Icon button". Simply drag and drop this in the Page Designer.
The Icon CSS Class: "fa-play-circle-o"
and the action: "Defined by Dynamic Action"
For the Dynamic Action: it should respond to the button click (of course)
Choose: Execute Javascript and enter:

22 September 2014

Almost two years ago, I wrote a little blog on how to trigger a Dynamic Action from a report. You can find that blog right here.
Things have changed with APEX5 (which is currently still in "early adopter 2") which allow you to do this in a more clean way (or at least I think so). No need to create a "fake link" so the user know that the icon is clickable. No need to upload your own images, use the already shipped Font Awesome library.

Based on that old blogpost I reused the same table structure and the same PL/SQL procedure. The only change I made was to the query on which the report is based:

select id tsk_id
,case ind_complete
when 'Y' then 'up'
when 'N' then 'down'
end ind_complete
,what
,complete_before
from tasks

The class added to the IND_COMPLETE column will contain the reference to the Font Awesome icons you want to show. The class "setComplete" is there to have the Dynamic Action fire when the column is clicked. The id reference is there, so the Dynamic Action will know which ID to update in the table. Finally styling the cursor so the user will know that the icon is clickable.

Next the Dynamic Action. The Dynamic Action is basically the same as in the original version:

Set the value of the clicked element in a hidden item

Execute the stored Procedure

Refresh the report

As far as the last point goes, there was a comment in the original blog which suggests using the "Submit Page" action because the pagination will return to the first set. I found a plugin to do a refresh which remembers the pagination, unfortunately it doesn't play well with APEX5.

18 September 2014

During a trial run for my presentation at Oracle Open World "Oracle 12c for Developers", you can find the slides on slideshare. there was a question regarding "Temporal Validity".
What is Temporal Validity?
The documentation says it best:

Temporal Validity Support lets you associate one or more valid time dimensions with a table and have data be visible depending on its time-based validity, as determined by the start and end dates or time stamps of the period for which a given record is considered valid.

The question was: "Is it possible to have multiple temporal valid periods for a table?"
According to the documentation definition above it should be possible to create multiple temporal valid periods. Let's try this.

17 September 2014

A common requirement is to show a Master-Detail Report where both the Master as well as the Detail Report show multiple records. When you click on one of the Master records, the connected detail records are shown as well.
This is very easy to accomplish with a Hidden item and a Dynamic Action.
First the Master Report, for this example I am using the DEPT table:

select d.deptno
,d.dname
,d.loc
from dept d

The detail report will consists of the employees which belong to the DEPT record which is clicked by the user.

select * from emp
where deptno = :P9_DEPTNO

You will notice that there is a reference to P9_DEPTNO in the query, that will be the hidden item.
So there are two reports and a hidden item on the page.
The user will need to click on something, so the DEPTNO column from the first report will act as a link. Navigate to the column and fill in the section labelled "Column Link".

For the Link attributes fill in the following information:

onclick="return false;" class="show-employees" id="#DEPTNO#"

Now all components are in place, time to create the Dynamic Action.
The Dynamic Action will respond to a click on the master report(DEPT). The link column has a class attribute of "show-employees" which act as the jQuery Selector.
Fill in the details when the Dynamic Action needs to fire as follows:

What does the Dynamic Action need to do? First it needs to set the value of the clicked DEPTNO in the hidden item. This can be done with a little bit of javascript:

apex.item( "P9_DEPTNO" ).setValue( this.triggeringElement.id );

The second part of the Dynamic Action is to refresh the Employees report. Add a TRUE action to the Dynamic Action where you specify "Refresh Region" and choose the details report (Employees).
You can find the demo right here.

About Me

Self-employed under the name allAPEX, mainly in The Netherlands. Presented at National and International Conferences. Oracle ACE Director for Database Development. Trainer for SQL and PL/SQL. Married, two children, likes to Barbecue.